Tears and Honey
by iCyou
Summary: Mere months after the victory of Lord Voldemort, the entire world has changed. Muggleborns are hunted like dogs, slaughtered, or worse: sold to the highest bider. Unfortunately, Hermione becomes slave to the worst person she can possibly imagine, Draco Malfoy. Hatred and torture. Glee and passion. Tears and honey. Nothing will ever be the same again.


Hermione quivered with fear, hardly daring to breathe. The ragged heave of her chest threatened to reveal her position to the enemy lurking far below. Every tremble, every jagged gasp, every minute movement was a risk for exposure. With ever fiber in her being, she hugged the wide trunk of the elm tree, praying to Merlin for balance as her quaking feet struggled to maintain equilibrium on the precariously thin branch.

Calming down was a necessity for survival. If she allowed her fear to go unchecked, her involuntary movements would expose her location to the Snatchers below. Hermione knew she'd had closer calls before, and managed to slip away unharmed. She just couldn't think of any at the moment.

"It went this way!" one of the dreadful men hollered.

"No, this way, you fools!" shouted another.

"You're both wrong. That way!" called a different Snatcher.

They paused in their hunt, arguing at the very base of her tree. Hermione held her breath, stricken with terror. It was difficult to focus through the panic, but she knew survival meant concentration. She peered upwards, gazing at the sky for a sense of calm. Each individual star twinkled back at her. If it weren't for the Snatchers it would have been a beautiful night. With fragile, forced calm Hermione paid close attention to her pursuers below. She counted five voices, all male, all hoarse with age. If it came down to the worst case scenario, she stood a slight chance in a duel. Even if she did defeat all five of them, which was unlikely, a horde of new Snatchers would be upon her in an instant. All unregistered wands performing magic were traceable, and only muggle-borns and blood-traitors would be unregistered. The age in their voices was both a good and bad thing. They were likely to be more experienced Snatchers, and therefore more likely to catch her. On the other hand, they were less likely to defile her once caught than a younger party would be.

Their conflicting attitudes was definitely a positive. If they were not working as an effective unit, Hermione had a better chance of escape. All things considered, Hermione pegged her odds at roughly fifty-fifty. She gazed steadily downward, but couldn't make out individual forms clearly. The dark robes the Snatchers wore made them scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding night. This was both a blessing and a curse. The darkness concealed both predator and prey.

"You are all idiots," an intimidating voice boomed, "while you bicker the mudblood slips away! The more time we spend arguing, the less likely we are to reach our end goal! Don't you fools see?"

Hermione suppressed a grim smile at the irony. They could debate the night away at the base of her tree, and it wouldn't change a thing. They had trapped her, and they weren't even aware. A vague memory of being read to in her pre-hogwarts days floated across her mind. The book was about a young American boy named Billy who saved up fifty US dollars and purchased two red hound dogs, Little Ann, and Old Dan. Billy and the dogs would go hunting every night, chasing raccoons into tree tops and killing them for their pelts. The dogs died at the end. At the time, Hermione had cried for the dogs. Now, she cried for the raccoon.

"I don't see you coming up with any brilliant ideas, Morris. Where do you think the mudblood went, hmm?" another voice inquired, oozing with sarcasm.

"It doesn't matter where it went, Gilis. Just pick a direction and go," Morris growled.

"That sounds like a well choreographed plan, Morris. Just pick any direction, no rhyme or reason. That truly is most ingenious," Gilis retorted.

"Well, any direction is better than no direction at all!" Morris snarled, dripping with venom.

"Boys, boys. Calm down. A single mudblood is only worth a few hundred Galleons. It's already gone. Not worth our time to track it down anyway," a sixth voice, a female voice entered the fray.

"Trish is right. Let's just make camp here, and start again tomorrow," yet another unknown joined the conversation.

With some moderate grumbling, the Snatchers began to set up camp, casting a few safety spells before putting out bedrolls.. Hermione imagined that the woman, Trish, and the unknown male voice were likely the leaders of this particular Snatcher group. She breathed a small, inaudible sigh of relief as her pursuers turned their attention to dinner and away from their quarry. With a flick of the wand, one of the Snatchers started a roaring fire. Hermione couldn't help but gaze at it from above in wonder, and longing. She'd forgotten what warmth felt like, what light looked like. For the last several months she'd only traveled late at night, when the majority of the Snatchers weren't on the hunt. That had ended midwinter, when she had been foolhardy enough to believe that the overcast night sky would hide the smoke of her small fire as she curled up next to the flames. Then, she was still travelling by day and keeping relatively warm at night. Long gone were those days.

Hermione was both relieved and panicked. The hunt was over for the night, and that was truly a blessing. But, their base camp's location would make escape difficult, and if she couldn't find a clever solution by dawn, her hiding spot would be clearly visible in the morning light.

The gears of Hermione's mind churned out futile idea after futile idea. If she hadn't lost all her survival supplies in her midwinter affair, she could have stood a chance. All she had was the robes on her back, the wand in her pocket, and her own body. With a sinking heart, she came to the realization that her wit was worth little in such a predicament. She would have to make a run for it after the Snatchers fell asleep.

The fire illuminated the faces of the witch and wizards below. They all wore the signature death eater robes, but that meant little. Hermione herself was wearing them, to avoid suspicion. The traditional death eater uniform was commonly seen on regular people, regardless of allegiances. Those who didn't darn the robe stood out, and those who stood out had a peculiar talent for dying.

Snatchers were often just regular witches and wizards looking to make a quick Galleon. The Mudblood Camps would pay Snatchers top dollar for their human cargo, and then resell the muggle-borns as slaves to pureblood families. The idea sent a shiver down Hermione's spin. She'd rather die free than live a thousand years a slave. It was difficult to keep up to date information on such things, as Hermione roamed from forest to forest. She dared not pass through any major towns. Occasionally, she would come across another fugitive and they would exchange information and war stories. The frequency of such meetings was on a constant decline, as her fellow absconders were captured or perished. Sometimes she wondered if she was the only one left.

The very little information Hermione had garnered on the Camps was horrifying. The Camps were run by the true death eaters. Hermione knew no specifics, but that fact alone was enough to paint a gruesome picture.

Hermione glared at the people below. How could they care so much for money, and so little about people?

She'd never watched Snatchers for so long, heard their voices so clearly. She was most surprised by their conversations. The talk was mostly of kids at home, significant others, and day jobs. It was shockingly mundane.

"Johnny won his quidditch game last Sunday! That boy was born to be a beater!"

"My twelve year anniversary with Pauline is coming up. Any gift ideas?"

"Work has been boring lately. Just mending the same black robes over and over again. It becomes tiresome after a while, you know?"

She litstened to all these conversations and more, and saw the Snatchers as normal people, with normal lives to get back to. The idea that the nasty people attempting to bring her to her doom were anything less than truly awful was an unusual realization for Hermione.

Gradually, the fire cooled to embers and amid the chirping crickets she heard the heavy snores of her pursuers. With extreme care, Hermione began her slow descent down the elm tree. Each step downward felt like a small victory. The continued sound of snores confirmed her success. She couldn't believe her luck. As she neared the bottom, she turned her head, catching a good look at the Snatchers. To her surprise, none of them had horns. In fact, they all looked exceedingly normal. She smiled softly as she lightly made final contact with the ground. For a moment, all was well, all was silent.

And then, very suddenly, it wasn't.

"_AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" _

With her fist step, a piercing shriek broke the night's calm.

_Stupid! Stupid, stupid, stupid! _Hermione screamed internally. How could she forget something as rudimentary as the Caterwauling Charm? Of course, they cast a Caterwauling Charm! Only an idiot would set up camp in the middle of the woods without setting an alarm spell!

In an instant, all six Snatchers were awake, and frantically scrambling out of their bedrolls, wands in tow.

"It's the mudblood!" the woman shouted.

With everything in Hermione's being she ran. Every atom was on fire, every blood vessel popping with adrenaline. She made a mad dash, weaving in and out of trees in a zig- zag. She'd read once that when being chased by a wild animal, it was best to run in an unusual pattern to confuse their senses. Hopefully, the same logic worked on Snatchers.

"Get her!"

"She's getting away you, fools!"

"Run faster, you morons!"

Hermione's legs ran and ran, and she prayed they'd never stop. She heard spell incantations, and flashes of light bounced all around. For a moment, she was invincible. For once in her life, she was lucky. There was no insurmountable challenge in the face of wit!

_"Patrificus Totalus!" _the female Snatcher called.

It hit square between the shoulder blades, as Hermione's luck ran out. Immediately, her limbs snapped together and her jaw clenched tight. She dropped lifelessly to the ground, as though made of plastic. Her eyes stayed open, without blinking. Despite her physical state, her insides were teeming with life. A dreadful vitality that threatened to wreck her cords apart. Hermione's psyche bathed in the horrible certainty of _over. _There was no act left to play in this endgame. Internally, she thrashed, she cried, she crawled like a child. Externally, her paralyzed body lay without expression, without movement.

It was all over.

**Hello, dear reader! First off let me say I am very grateful to you for reading my story at all (bonus points if you're actually reading the A/N). Before we embark on an epic journey together, first let me tell you a little about myself. I've been a fanfictoin writer since I was 10 (I abandoned my original account because it was all really horrible _Twilight_** **fanfiction that ignored everything from grammar and mechanics to the laws of physics). I'm currently 17. I write mostly Dramione fanfiction, now days. I have some really terrible iCarly fanfiction that I want to delete but can't bring myself too (it's like I vomited my teenage angst into a 40 chapter romance anxiety attack). You may know me from my other Draco/Hermione fic _Bruises of The Midnight__ Rose, _but rather you know me or not isn't really important.**

**Anyway, this is obviously a Dramione fanfiction. I warn you now that in the future I may change this to M (Possibly!). I'm not big into smut writing (though I make no promises to be 100% wholesome), but I might change the rating as slavery is a touchy topic, and some of the subjects I plan to cover aren't appropriate for small children (at least according to ). This story takes place after Voldemort and company win the war, and follows Hermione and Draco's bizarre, unstable, so wrong (AND YET SO RIGHT) relationship, and other things as well. I hope you're as excited as I am! I'm feeling cheesy tonight, sorry.**

**Leave a review in the dooblydoo!**


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